...a blog about the pottery happenings in my life. I'm a potter, living in Los Angeles, California.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Kilns and Bowls

I made it up to the kiln for a little bit today. Not a whole lot going on..but the weather was mild enough to tolerate scraping a few bricks in preparation for the soon to be stacked stack. As you can see we're getting close to the end. Have I said that before? Probably. During the holiday break while most of us were away, Scott took the effort and time to finish up the back wall. Looks good, right? One of the nicest touches that I'm really into are the spy-holes. Notice how they're notched on the inside and out? That's going to give us such a large range of vision when looking inside. Also, for whatever firing is going on, if the people choose to spray a water/soda solution into the kiln from these ports, they will get more soda on a lot more pieces.

Having brick from a great old soda and salt kiln means we picked up a lot of bricks with some super great surfaces. Not only are the surfaces juicy...but some or just downright gorgeous. I wish I could use them all..but I'm excited about peppering in a few of these golden oldie bricks for another round of use. All I had to do was just chip away the edges so they'll still stack straight. It should turn into a nice looking stack.

And can you believe it? I've been making my own work again. Here's my latest kick that I'm preparing for a few woodfirings coming at me in February. I've done plenty of rope impressed pots before, but it's something that I always like to come back to..and I'm really liking the way these are coming out. Since I'm rolling the rope while the pot is still so wet, the impression is showing through onto the inside of the bowl. Also, instead of rolling the rope and trimming the foot, the clay is still soft enough once trimmed that I can roll the rope all the way down to the foot ring. A friend back in Utah saw me trim once and said he new people who made their pots at an even drier state, let alone trimming them. I'm a big softy when it comes to making and especially trimming.. unless I need to throw something tall?...then the stiffer the better.